An Assassin's Alphabet
by Miss M Cricket
Summary: A series of 26 short fics, set in the same verse, based on Lucien Lachance and his old life as a Speaker as well as his new un-life as the spectral companion of the new Listener.
1. A is for Apple

**Title**: An Assassins Alphabet

**Fandom**: Elder Scrolls

**Rating**: Teen

**Character**: Lucien Lachance

**Meme**: Inspired by the Dragon Age Alphabet meme Combination_NC started on Tumblr.

**Premise**: Pick a character and write a short fic for every letter of the alphabet, exploring the character's relationships, memories...whatever you want.

**Overview**: A to Z on our favourite assassin Lucien Lachance.

* * *

**A is for Apple**

Lucien had always been rather fond of apples.

There was something about them, the smooth skin, the sweet flesh of the fruit yielding under his dagger, or his teeth. The taste was always surprising, a burst of flavour on his tongue, and the sound, the crunch of a crisp apple was incomparable.

He didn't know where his love of apple began, but he did have a vague memory of his mother, with her long black hair and kind, but tired brown eyes sitting on the bed beside him when he was ill, and cutting up a green apple for him. She sliced it into quarters, chopping away the core, and he would watch her through fevered dark eyes so like her own.

Jiselle Lachance was a kind soul, who deeply loved her son, taking care of him even after his worthless father abandoned them to travel north to Skyrim. She had not deserved to die, too poor to send for a proper healer, too far to travel to Bruma and the Temple there. Too weak to use the untrained magic in her Breton blood to heal herself. She had feared that gift, her birthright, but her son did not make the same mistake.

She died and Lucien left their little farm under the apple trees.

Or rather he had been forced to leave. With his mother's death he could no longer afford to keep the land, no longer tend and care for it. She died in summer, when the ground had thawed just enough to dig, and when he buried her he thought it was over. In time though a new family came to claim his home.

Their sons drove him off, his pack full with the sweet apples that only his farm seemed to provide.

All around Cyrodil and all around Skyrim, no matter if he was thieving for the Thieves guild, or harvesting souls for the Dark Brotherhood, apples could always be found, and always be easily stolen.

Easily poisoned. They seemed to have an aptitude for it...rather like him. He always had to be careful and precise in keeping his poisoned apples away from his larder. He had a fondness for the fruit, and would frequently taste the many varieties grown throughout Tamriel.

But none tasted as sweet as Applewatch Apples.

* * *

Mairin is a noisy eater.

Lucien grinds his spectral teeth together, not missing the sound of enamel crunching, nor the uncomfortable ache that inevitably follows. He misses some things about life, but the niggling aches and pains are not included.

Right now his Listener is sprawled ungracefully on her bedroll, blade close at hand, crunching noisily on the apple she's fished out of her pack. Some might find the sounds soothing, the rhythmic crunch and wet chewing, followed by swallowing, breathing and then biting again, but Lucien does not. The sight of her chewing is a reminder that he will never taste apple again.

"Listener..." He growls finally and his summoner looks up, pale blue eyes focusing questioningly on his spectral outline.

"Lucien..." she responds in kind, eyebrow arching slightly, "Do you need something brother?"

He likes that she just treats him like he is still a member of the Brotherhood, rather than a ghost lackey like so many of his summoners have been over the last 200 years.

"Your chewing is rather...excessive." Lucien drawls back, sliding an incorporeal hand through the log he is appearing to perch on, "It is loud."

"So?" Mairin is not making it easy for him, taking another large bite of the fruit and grinning at him with her mouth full.

Lucien scrunches his nose disapprovingly at her.

"It is the mark of an Assassin to favour silence." He reminds her, looking pointedly at the apple, "Your...mastication of your fruit, is hardly silent. Or even quiet,"

"Lucien..." Mairin gives him a fond but firm look, and he is yet again reminded of why she will be an excellent Listener. She has the commanding gaze already, "It is just an apple."

"As you wish My Listener." He responds with a sigh, shaking his head at her. The young woman takes another large and intentionally loud bite and then chews as audibly as she can. Lucien rolls his ghostly eyes at her.

"Did you like apples when you were alive?" She asks him now, distracted from her weighty thoughts by her spectral companion, "Or were you more of a cabbage man?"

"I found apples ideal for poisoning." Lucien informs her just arching an eyebrow as the woman sits up, "Their flavours were most conducive for...concealment of powerful toxins."

"An alchemist," Mairin laughs, plucking some springy wintergrass from beside her, "Should have figured. You seem like the obsessive, finicky type."

"Alchemy takes precision and methodic preparation."

"Yeah, yeah." The woman rolls her eyes, "Give me a bow and an arrow any day. Poisons are too chancy."

"Hence why poisoned apples are perfect," Lucien rejoins, "Every house has apples, and no one notices a poisoned one. It's subtle, elegant."

"It's chancy." Mairin repeats, eyeing him in a way that makes him feel a little wary, "Hmmmm..."

"What are you doing now My Listener?"

"Ten points if I get this apple core through your head."

Lucien glares at her.

Mairin grins back.

"What kind of apple is it?" he asks her, as she takes her final bite of the fruit, "It has been a while since I sampled one."

"I'll say..." Mairin chuckles, and tosses the apple core into the air, "Cyrodill, small farm near Bruma...There is a tree there that grows the reddest apples in Tamriel, sweet too."

Lucien is silent.

He remembers the small farm house, remembers the smell of apple trees, the crunch of snow on hard earth. He remembers the taste of apple on his tongue as black cloaked assassins burst into the building, silent and merciless as shadows.

He remembers the cold burn of steel, and then...he remembers the chill of the void.

Sithis allowed him to see his Silencer defeat the traitor Matthieu Bellamont, allowed him to see her return to his mutilated corpse, and bury him under an apple tree. She always understood him.

The Night Mother made the apples bloom red...the red of blood.

Mairin's blue eyes are on him, and for a moment he thinks he sees understanding in those cold depths. She knows more than she says does his Listener.

Then she pegs the apple through his ghostly head.

For a moment he thinks he can taste that sweet flavour that haunts him.

Then her laughter fills the air and he sighs at her fondly.

She is not his Silencer...but she reminds him of her.


	2. B is for Betrayal

**Title**: An Assassins Alphabet

**Fandom**: Elder Scrolls

**Rating**: Teen

**Character**: Lucien Lachance

**Meme**: Inspired by the Dragon Age Alphabet meme Combination_NC started on Tumblr.

**Premise**: Pick a character and write a short fic for every letter of the alphabet, exploring the character's relationships, memories...whatever you want.

**Overview**: A to Z on our favourite assassin Lucien Lachance.

* * *

**B is for Betrayal**

In his long years of service to Sithis Lucien had seen many forms of betrayal; the betrayal of a lover, of a friend, of family. He had seen it all across Cyrodil, across Tamriel, and yet somehow one innocent naive belief had lingered.

He'd believed the Brotherhood was above it.

The Tenets were supposed to protect them from such a thing, the Wrath of Sithis was supposed to dole out justice to the traitor and the Brotherhood would remain strong to its core. That was what he had believed.

He had not imagined that the Night Mother would allow Bellamont to wreak his intentions without check, how could he have? He had been trained to believe the Tenets absolute. Eventually though he had been forced to face the reality, as corpse after corpse of family members were discovered...all with some connection back to the Cheydinhal Sanctuary.

All with some connection back to him.

The Black Hand had been weak and corrupt for a long time, this Lucien had known. He had not known that Bellamont was the Night Mother's weapon to cleanse it.

He had not known the true cost of Purifying the Brotherhood.

One by one his family had been killed, at first by Bellamont, hidden in secret, a traitor without name or face. Then at the hand of his Silencer, the rest of them wiped out without mercy, at the order of the Black Hand, passed down through him to her.

She had been distraught; he'd seen it in the pinched look about her mouth and eyes, the pain, and utter loathing. Loathing directed at him, and at herself. He'd been strong for both of them, insisting on it being carried out, despite her silent pleading, despite the fact that it tore him inside to order it.

To slaughter their family, it was the cruellest betrayal of all.

Betrayed by the Black Hand who was supposed to govern and keep them strong, supposed to protect them all. And the betrayers, wielders of the knives that ended their family's lives.

They had been alone, two single souls, the survivors and the cause of a massacre.

Little wonder he had found comfort in her, knowing she lived, that she breathed, that she was there to be the sharp blade in his hand.

He had thought, maybe after Bellamont was destroyed, maybe then he would seek to seduce his little Assassin.

But there had not been an after Bellamont.

Not for him.

And after he was sent screaming to the void, Lucien had watched in sadness as his Silencer took up the mantle of Listener.

He had betrayed her too in the end.

By leaving her.

* * *

The ground flies under them.

Lucien is no longer used to travelling at these kinds of speeds. Normally his summoners and Shadowmere would travel at a steady but brisk pace. But not today.

Today they are flying across the ground, Mairin clinging to her horse, blue eyes watering, but face a mask of determination.

"Someone told them." She yells at him, head turning to look at his almost shredded spectral form as he forces himself to keep pace with the otherworldly horse, "Someone shared our plan! Can you believe it?"

"You must focus on the now." He tells her, knowing she will hear his voice no matter how soft he speaks, "They have located the Sanctuary. You may be the only member of the Family living."

"Cicero..."

"You know not where he is. He may never return."

Mairin looks tortured as she ducks under a branch before it can whip her off the smooth glossy back of the beast thundering under her, "Why would they tell the Penitus Occulatus? It doesn't make sense."

"Betrayal is rarely logical." Lucien informs her, voice gentling slightly as Shadowmere races across a shallow stream, "But your task now is clear."

"Not to me..." she gives a weak laugh, "I don't know what in the Void I'm doing! Some Listener I am."

"It is clear. You must find any surviving members of your family, uncover the traitor and you must retrieve the Night Mother. Without her there is no Brotherhood. If they destroy her...then we are finished."

"We might be the only ones left." She says to him, her voice a little choked, "You, me and Shadowmere."

It is like time ripples and for a moment he almost hears another female voice saying those words, almost sees his Silencer's dark blue eyes and stubborn mouth.

Except she never said it, it was there on her face, clear in her eyes, set in her mouth, the knowledge that they were all that was left of Cheydinhal.

But this isn't his Silencer, this is Mairin, his Summoner, his Listener, and his protégé.

"It may be so. But all is not lost. You must be ready."

And when it comes time she is.

He hears her scream when Ambjorn is cut down by weapons, the Werewolf's massive jaws taking down the men who killed him as he dies. He helps her save Nazir, he guides Babette to her, he's there as they run for the exits and she seeks out the Night Mother.

In the shadows of the coffin waiting for it to end, it's his shadowed fingers that brush, soft and almost substantial against her hair and face, calming her terror at being confined.

And he is there beside her when Astrid confesses, and when Mairin steps out of the room, leaving the other woman's corpse behind.

Betrayal has left his mark; there are lines on her face that were not there before.

But she is alive, and for that, Lucien is grateful.


End file.
